Stop racism against Asians in Palo Alto Unified School District

Dear PAUSD School Board Trustees, Superintendent Don Austin, 

We request that you put a stop to racism against Asians at the Palo Alto Unified School District.  We are highlighting a few recent troubling episodes that we found completely unacceptable:

1.

On Jan 23, during the special board meeting regarding Ethnic Studies, there were conducts from the PAUSD teaching and administrative staff that were offensive:

Ms Chiu, an Ethnic Studies proponent, thoughtfully and calmly asked various reasonable questions about the curriculum of the course being mandated- such as what the proposed curriculum was.  She was subjected to continuous hostilities- repeatedly jeered, hackled, interrupted, condescendingly dismissed by supporters who packed the room before the public was allowed in, and teachers, and much more so than the other two non-Asian board members who had similar questions.  The hostilities continued unabated throughout the meeting with little action by the Board President.

At 2:27:55, a teacher threw his hands up and rudely exclaimed to Ms Chiu ‘You've never come to our classrooms to talk about this stuff- unbelievable!  So what I would like to do is to ask your education degrees. Wow that's great!’.  This was a completely unprofessional response to reasonable questions from Ms Chiu about the curriculum, while exercising the board’s oversight function of the district.

At 3:00:08, Ms Chiu said, ‘I want to say personally I have not felt very safe in this room.’

At 3:50:24, the district Director of Curriculum, said ‘I worry about the word safe as a person who has to worry about my husband driving and coming home right, if he gets pulled over so the word safety is something we have to be aware of what that means.’  We completely empathize with the Director’s lived experiences, but to summarily dismiss the lived experiences of Asians is a mockery to the values espoused by Ethnic studies.  The inference that Asians Americans are not sufficiently oppressed, and thus should be invisible and not entitled to feel unsafe, is both dangerous and wrong. Asians encounter this, and other types of veiled and overt prejudice and racism, microaggressions and profiling at PAUSD and in Palo Alto every day, including during that board meeting.

The irony is not lost to us that these actions happened a) during a meeting about Ethnic Studies, a course that is supposed to promote about racial understanding and inclusion, b) by staff whose comments are biased against and dismissive of Asians, and c) are entrusted to deliver the course to our kids at PAUSD, 41% of them Asians.  

To date, the district still has not rebuked the Director’s ‘safety’ comment.

2. 

The Director received criticism from @AZNsAgainstWoke on X afterwards for her comment, along with a screenshot of the PAUSD website.  Ms Chiu, in response, tweeted that she would ‘not be suppressed’.  

Some of the comments from other users turned abusive.  We categorically reject online abuse by anyone- not the abuse the Director received for her public comment as a minority, and not the abuse Ms Chiu and her children in the district received for her tweet as a minority.  The safety of our teachers, district staff, board members and students is paramount.

With that said, many of us are offended by the comment made by the Director.  Subsequent reasonable criticisms by the Asian community that followed the norms of civilised public discourse should not be misconstrued as abuse, given the Director made the comment as a public school official at a meeting open to the public.

3.

Palo Alto Management Association, which represents the management professionals of PAUSD, including the principals and vice-principals of the schools, sent a joint letter to the board condemning Ms Chiu for her online actions and demanded her resignation.  

• The inference from PAMA that doxxing was involved by Ms Chiu was highly misleading and disturbing.  The tweet, unaffiliated with Ms Chiu, showed a screenshot of the public PAUSD website posted by PAUSD employees.
• Retweeting means ‘referring to a particular tweet’.  To infer that retweeting by Ms Chiu means a blanket endorsement of all tweets from the account made before and after, and all comments from the cybersphere afterwards, reflects a fundamental lack of understanding of the Twitter/ X platform, and a cynical attempt to imply guilt by association.
• While we were offended by the Director’s comments, we do not believe in hasty condemnations and resignation demands, and would welcome dialogues to resolve our differences. We fundamentally believe in the good of individuals.  PAMA’s demand of resignation, and the resulting attacks on her children strongly resembles a veiled public intimidation campaign, designed to silence our representatives voted in by the public, when they hold a different opinion from the district and the staff.  This proves the very point that Ms Chiu made with her tweet, that she is being silenced.  It also reeks of a cynical attempt to overturn the overwhelming will of the voters when Ms Chiu was voted in by the highest vote count in November’s election.

We have three demands:

1. PAUSD rebukes the offensive safety comment from the Director.
2. Dr. Austin, and the representatives of the PAMA letter hold a Q&A with the PAUSD Asian community to address their concerns about Asian racism and prejudice at PAUSD.
3. Ms Segal, the board president, conducts board meetings fairly, ensures equitable public entry into the meeting room, and prohibits any disturbances and harassment of public officials in any future board meetings that she chairs, regardless of her own personal views on the topics discussed.  

Respectfully,

(Related petition to support Rowena Chiu with over 2000 signatories)